Finally, shopping as it was meant to be, thanks to the US

THE week before Christmas Shanahan pere and mere, unusually, went shopping together. Pere is the shopper of the household, and a mighty keen one, too, channelling the instinctive cunning and brute strength needed for killing a woolly mammoth into getting 10 cents off a dozen toilet roles . Mere, on the other hand, would rather kill a woolly mammoth than go to the supermarket.

This year, however, our pre-Christmas foray led us to the outskirts of Canberra and a glittering portal of earthly delights. For a $60 registration fee we found a place where all shopping can be done in one vast emporium with almost unlimited choice, where not only is the toilet paper to be had by the container load, but the washing up stuff too. And the food, oh the food!

This is the new suburban cathedral of consumption; this is Costco, a huge wholesale warehouse, which is not just a shop, it's a shopping phenomenon. You can buy anything, from whole Atlantic salmon at the incredible price of $19.99 a kilogram ( dropped to $14 just before Christmas) to electric pianos and diamond necklaces -- and get your glasses fixed.

At a time when retailers are supposed to be struggling, Costco is packing them in. People want a bargain, in good times or bad, even more in the bad. And for smart suburban Australians being well off is no reason to turn your nose up at a bargain. Since Costco opened in July in the Canberra- Queanbeyan area, there have been 49,500 registrations in a population of just over 330,000. That is a fair proportion of the richest city in Australia. Compare that with Costco at Auburn in Sydney, where registrations are just over 100,000.

The psychology of a place such as Costco is important. Shopping there is a great conversation topic. We enthusiastically exchange tips on our latest Costco coups, a vital form of self-affirmation and one-upmanship. I'm even thinking of going back to shopping regularly. It is a liberating experience to throw off the chains of mediocre affectation that weigh down the inner Canberra precinct and mix it with the hoi polloi.

Of course, for people who do not seriously shop, but instead frequent places such as organic grocery stores where the undersized, bruised and knobbly produce is in inverse proportion to the price, places such as Costco are anathema. The complaint most heard is that this phenomenon is part of the evil Americanisation of our economy and so-called culture. Exactly which of our delicate Australian cultural sensibilities is offended by buying cheap good stuff is hard to say. However, I suspect the people who don't like the gung-ho consumerism of Costco are the same people who go around in their hybrid cars bemoaning the popularity of Maccas, and talking of slow food, but who don't like shopping with people they consider to be bogans.

The popularity of a place such as Costco tells us a lot about ourselves. Our lifestyle, our food-buying habits and our demand for quality and variety. Our expectations now more than ever do resemble the American aspirational way. (Even the cuts and marbling of the meat at Costco are American ) and a good thing too.

The financial crisis has cast a pall of gloom over 2012 but I am one consumer who is fed up with the Cassandras who foresee the decline of American cultural and economic influence. These so far totally unreliable oracles might think about the Costco phenomenon, what I call Costconomics. If Costco is America then that is what everyone wants . We all want to be America, not China.

The decline of American influence and the rise of the Asian century seem to have become truisms, but no seriously clever pundit really believes that the great American entrepreneurial spirit is dead. Do they really think that we are all doomed to live in a world that can't aspire to American standards of living with the American ideal of affordability, choice and plenty? When we talk about the Asian century we forget how much Asians aspire to be Americans too. America's culture is vastly influential, no place on earth is untouched by its influence.

But the real reason that I have a sense that America is not finished is that it is simply a powerhouse of ideas. And because America is an immigrant culture, in fact, the first great immigrant culture, it absorbs ideas and culture and throws it all back out to be reabsorbed by the rest of the world, so its culture is infinitely malleable.

China, with its rigid centralised dictatorship, its punitive social policies and its lack of openness to other cultures cannot yet be any match for America. As its people chafe against these things eventually, the current regime will be destroyed by its rigidity.

So despite the financial situation and collapse of the real estate market I believe that eventually America will lift itself out of the present situation. The diversity, richness and natural entrepreneurship of America's people are its greatest asset. On this I am in accord with our Prime Minister: "Americans can do anything."